Navigating The Second Machine AgeArtificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation

The “First Machine Age” and the Industrial Revolution has pushed the planet to the ecological edge with Climate Change. Now, simultaneously with the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Computer Automation, “The Second Machine Age” is poised to disrupt everything about the way we work and live. In so many ways we are living in a golden age where technology and computer power are changing everything about our lives. But with that change come real consequences to the way society, businesses and governments will function in the future.

For the past 50 years computer processing power has been doubling every 18 months and now we are at the inflection point where we will see the true results of this computer revolution. We are at the beginning of an exponential curve and Robotics and AI will have a profound effect on who works and how they work. Right now companies like Narrative Sciences, Google’s DeepMind and IBM’s Watson have developed the ability to ask and answer questions, write human narratives and interpret the world of big data and then communicate that data to us in an understandable “human” way. They have bridged the gap between big data and the human experience. This will fundamentally disrupt the jobs of countless information workers. People like doctors, accountants, lawyers, writers, publishers, universities workers.

The same is true for service and customer service jobs; call centers, servers in restaurants, receptionists. All these jobs are at risk.

Simultaneously, companies like Rethink Robotics, Google Self Driving cars, Uber, Amazon Warehouse Processing are set to disrupt the jobs of transportation and factory workers around the world.

It’s the science fiction future come to life.

“47% of all employment in North America is susceptible to automation over the next two decades”

Carl Benedikt Frey, Michael A. Osborne, University of Oxford

Massive disruption is coming to the labour market and we are not ready.

Human Impact Lab will help distill the big data story of the Second Machine Age for citizens, businesses, governments and institutions so they can understand and prepare for the imminent disruptions.